In re Marriage of Guinn

While Cheryl Guinn (plaintiff) and David Guinn (defendant) were married, David’s parents created and funded an irrevocable generation-skipping trust. The trust’s terms required the trustees to make annual distributions to David of the net income generated by the trust corpus, meaning the trust’s assets. The terms also gave the trustees discretionary authority to make payments to David from the assets themselves as reasonably necessary for David’s health, support, and education. Upon David’s death, the terms stated that the corpus would remain in trust for the benefit of David’s descendants. David had no right to control the trust’s assets, decide how the assets should be invested, or determine what constituted trust income versus trust principal. Those powers resided with the trustees. David was merely a lifetime beneficiary of the trust income. When Cheryl and David divorced, Cheryl admitted that David had no property interest in the trust corpus but argued that David’s interest in the trust income constituted a property interest that was marital property subject to division between the spouses. The trial court disagreed, concluding that David’s income interest did not constitute property, making it unnecessary to classify it as marital or separate. The court did not factor David’s income interest into its equitable division of the spouses’ assets. Cheryl appealed.